Hegel and Hegelianism
Hegel (Full name: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel) (August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher in part of the tradition of german idealism, but who was so influential he spawned his own tradition later called hegalianism. The topics he covered were so wide, and his influence so vast that in many ways his works fundamentally transformed philosophy. Even those who disagreed heavily with his trends such as nietzsche and heidegger still heavily wrote in response to them. Since the amount of things he wrote on was immeasurably vast, only the most notable ones will be recounted here. Hegel is highly relevent to megaten, being one of the philosophers who is actually mentioned by name, with some of his ideas laid out. In persona 5, goro describes the dialectical method, implying that for this reason it is good to hear an opposing voice. However, the more relevant appearance of hegelian ideas is in mainline. Where law and chaos are depicted as in a kind of dialectical relation that shows evolution from their interaction. The fact of this being mentioned in p5 meaning that this association is being explicitly noted as well. His ethics are also a large basis for the contextualization of the goals of law, and he may be a large inspiration for the pantheistic elements in the series as well. Historicism Historicism. One of the major ideas that although it preceded him was popularized most heavily be hegel is the idea of historicism. Historicism is the idea that to understand ideas, they cannot be approached as if they were static categories, but have to be approached in terms of the path that led to their development. Before hegel's time in the west many philosophers assumed categories were inherently static, and you merely had to discover the truth on them, but historicism introduced in a large way that the categories themselves are shaped by the process of seeking. Historicism suggests that any human society and all human activities such as science, art, or philosophy, are defined by their history. Consequently, their essence can be sought only by understanding said history. The history of any such human endeavor, moreover, not only continues but also reacts against what has gone before; this is the source of Hegel's famous dialectic teaching that is often summarized by the slogan "thesis, antithesis, and synthesis". (Though note that Hegel did not use these terms, although Johann Fichte did.) To understand an idea means to understand where in the unfolding of the dialectic that it takes place. To hegel this was not just a way of looking at the world, but a fundamental truth and metanarrative it unfolded by. Hegel's position is perhaps best illuminated when contrasted against the atomistic opinion of human societies as being constructed as a sum of the actions of individuals. Hegel considers the relationship between individuals and societies as organic, not atomic: even their social discourse is mediated by language, and language is based on etymology and unique character. It thus preserves the culture of the past in thousands of half-forgotten metaphors. To understand why a person is the way he is, you must examine that person in his society: and to understand that society, you must understand its history, and the forces that influenced it. The Zeitgeist, the "Spirit of the Age," is the concrete embodiment of the most important factors that are acting in human history at any given time. This contrasts with teleological theories of activity, which suppose that the end is the determining factor of activity, as well as those who believe in a tabula rasa, or blank slate, opinion, such that individuals are defined by their interactions on an individual level. Hegel was one of the first modern philosophers to stress that our ideas, especially those expressed in philosophies and sciences, are not just loosely connected, but rather they form an interconnected system, each member of which is implicated in, or required by, the others. Another way of putting this is that, at the deepest level, philosophies and sciences are like organic wholes. Hegel might say that, in Kant's philosophy, cause-effect and substance-accident, though verbally distinct, require each other in the way that the heart and lungs in a human body require each other. Each organ in the body, and each important idea in a system of ideas, plays a role or makes a contribution to the operation of the whole philosophy. Meaning basically that you cannot just alter one concept. When Einstein in the 20th century challenged the prevailing Newtonian concepts of space and time, every other concept in physics, concepts like mass and velocity, concepts of measurement too, was affected as well. Seeing people as inherently tied to the spirit of their age is of course something you see a bit of in megaten also. Since it shows how various people in some way will reflect the place they came from even if they themselves are going against it. Megaten of course doesn't depict this as an absolute metanarriative, and instead depicts it in a more modern sociological light, but a loose parallel is there. Albeit this aspect presumably not being based on hegel in particular. Hikawa for instance talks about the past as meaningless events that aren't tied to one narrative in particular, and as something which in contrast you can make a clean break from. The dialectical method The hegelian dialectic is often described in a threefold matter as thesis - antithesis - synthesis. However, he himself never used that specific terminology, and himself ascribed that terminology to Kant. While that terminology is close to his formulation, it is slightly distinct from hegel's own model which he describes closer to something like Abstract - Negative - Concrete. The terminology, thesis-antithesis-synthesis, does not explain why the thesis requires an antithesis. However, the formula, abstract-negative-concrete, suggests a flaw, or perhaps an incompleteness, in any initial thesis - it is too abstract and lacks the negative of trial, error, and experience. For Hegel, the concrete, the synthesis, the absolute, must always pass through the phase of the negative, in the journey to completion, that is, mediation. To describe the activity of overcoming the negative, Hegel also often used the term Aufhebung, variously translated into English as "sublation" or "overcoming," to conceive of the working of the dialectic. Roughly, the term indicates preserving the useful portion of an idea, thing, society, etc., while moving beyond its limitations. It is also referred to as the negation of the negation. Something is only what it is in its relation to another, but by the negation of the negation this something incorporates the other into itself in the form of idea, thus strengthening its own identity. Or in other words describing the unities in terms of a higher concept that grounds them. The dialectical method was a part of the development of dialectical logic, which is the system of laws of thought, developed within the Hegelian and Marxist traditions, which seeks to supplement or replace the laws of formal logic with ones that are more dynamic, seeing logic not as abstract but as something that can only be fully realized in the unfolding of tangible events. In the Logic, for instance, Hegel describes a dialectic of existence: first, existence must be posited as pure Being (Sein); but pure Being, upon examination, is found to be indistinguishable from Nothing (Nichts). When it is realized that what is coming into being is, at the same time, also returning to nothing (in life, for example, one's living is also a dying), both Being and Nothing are united as Becoming. This being because the original idea focused on static categories, but static categories are not adequate to describe the nature of existence, which encompasses both life and death. Aristotle thought natural kinds (genera and species) eternally fixed, as did most biologists before Darwin revolutionized biology. Hegel, who died about thirty years before Darwin published Origin of Species, also thinks species fixed. But he distinguishes the realm of nature, where things follow fixed, repetitive patterns, from what happens in the realm of Geist, spirit or mind or, when it is used in a collective sense, what we might call national culture. In the realm of Geist, time makes a difference; one can speak of history and development. Matters are not fixed but constantly passing over into something else: this passing over is a kind of progress, toward greater internal richness and self-sufficiency. Hegel says that each historical period has its own truth. This "truth" refers, roughly, to the totality of propositions held true by the leading thinkers of the period. This truth is not an absolute truth, but is considered truth by him in the sense that it is the most accurate information relative to the possible understanding of their times. In the sense that we might say classical physics was "true" in a sense of not being inaccurate within the parameters it was culturally designed to be able to describe, but was replaced by more expansive modern relativistic physics. Even more than Aristotle and the Stoics, Hegel believed that the study of logic is an investigation into the fundamental structure of reality itself. According to Hegel, all logic (and, hence, all of reality) is dialectical in character. What this means is that the world is fundamentally rational, and so can be called "spirit" inasmuch as logic is the structure of rationality and this same logic is what shaped the unfolding of the world. Meaning that its structure is fundamentally continuous with that of mind, making it comprehensible from the mental angle. (He may have also thought there was a literal sentient underlying god or world soul behind it making this the case, but what exactly he means by absolute spirit is left ambiguous). Marx was one of the many figures inspired by hegel's thinking, though marx is said to have invented the world of hegel. Where hegel places ideas and logic as primary, with the world being based around them, marx sees the dialectic as between material conditions and classes, and the ideas emerging in response to this. Two trends that emerged from hegel in his life were right hegelianism which interpreted it more in a religious light and focused on the group, and left hegelianism (or young hegelianism) which interpreted it more on an atheistic and revolutionary light, and from which marx was inspired by. The dialectical method is mentioned directly of course in persona 5. Goro thanks you for disagreeing with him, saying that counterpoints help one's position evolve, directly naming hegel as a support for this. However, as stated above, the more relevant appearance of hegelian ideas is in mainline. Where law and chaos are depicted as in a kind of dialectical relation that shows evolution from their interaction. Neutral does not reject law and chaos per say, just the idea of going all towards one at the exclusion of the other. In situations like ivas bonds ending it shows the sides preserved in a more moderate form in the neutral world to help facilitate continuing evolution of the ideas. Spirit and absolute Absolute idealism refers to hegel's idea of how being is ultimately comprehensible as an all-inclusive whole, referred to as the absolute. Hegel was an idealist, in the tradition of his predecessor, Kant. Like Kant, Hegel believed that we do not perceive the world or anything in it directly and that all our minds have access to is ideas of the world—images, perceptions, concepts. For Kant and Hegel, the only reality we know is a virtual reality. Hegel’s idealism differs from Kant’s in two ways. First, Hegel believed that the ideas we have of the world are social, which is to say that the ideas that we possess individually are utterly shaped by the ideas that other people possess. Our minds have been shaped by the thoughts of other people through the language we speak, the traditions and mores of our society, and the cultural and religious institutions of which we are a part. Spirit is Hegel’s name for the collective consciousness of a given society, which shapes the ideas and consciousness of each individual. Spirit. Hegel uses the word geist, which is often translated as spirit. In his original writings he also equated it to the idea of aether, but dropped this use over time. Hegel studies spirit under three headings: Subjective Spirit, Objective Spirit, and Absolute Spirit. Objective Spirit is produced by Subjective. Objective is an outgrowth, negation, or externalization of Subjective, much as Nature is a negation or externalization of the Absolute Idea. The absolute spirit or world spirit is both the rational structure in reality itself, as well as the conclusion to which it is all unfolding to. Hegel was incorporating the objective idealism of views, especially common among German historians, in which social life and thought were understood in terms of the mental or spiritual structures that informed them. But in contrast to both forms of idealism, Hegel was seen as postulating a form of absolute idealism by including both subjective life and the objective cultural practices on which subjective life depended within the dynamics of the development of the self-consciousness and self-actualization of the Absolute Spirit as a rational ordering structure of reality. Subjective Spirit refers to those aspect of human life that roughly fall under psychology, the individual soul as a feeling being; sense-experience, desire, reason; intention, recollection, imagination, memory. These are the sorts of things which Rousseau describes in his autobiographical Confessions. Subjective spirit is common to each of us insofar as we are embodied individuals. Objective spirit is the domain in which our inner selves burst into a public world, the domain of action, morality, and politics. The three "moments" or aspects of Objective Spirit are law, morality, and social ethics. Subjective Spirit is potential force, while Objective Spirit is force in action. It is also called folk spirit or national spirit, or spirit of the times. Absolute spirit. The “Absolute Idea” or "World spirit" is both the apex and foundation of the philosophical system of Hegel. It includes all the stages of the Logic leading up to it; it is the process of development with all its stages and transitions. The Absolute Idea, or “World Spirit”, plays the same kind of role for Hegel as a deity “History is the Idea clothing itself with the form of events.” It is associated with philosophy, religion, and art. Absolute Spirit is the goal, aim or target of the force as well as the reflection (realization) of the targets. Hegel says that "all reality is spirit." This does not necessarily mean that all things are conscious, but that reality itself is structured logically, and this same logic is the structure of human minds. Hegel held that reality must be rational, so that its ultimate structure is revealed in the structure of our thought. Thus linking logic and metaphysics. This being seen as an important link to draw as an answer to kant who some saw as calling into question the possibility of in depth metaphysical speculation. Hegel sees reality as the "unfolding" of the divine mind, which manifests itself in reality via this logical structure, similar to greek concepts of logos or nous (he himself making the nous comparison). The end goal of this process would be the potential arrival of an end of history type event, where human consciousness fully manifests the world spirit within reality, and as a collective becomes conscious of itself. This collective of human consciousness would then arrive at a uniform state of ideas, and ideas would no longer need to evolve because it has absolute knowledge. Though individual humans may only each embody only an aspect of this knowledge. In this picture, Hegel is seen as offering a metaphysico-religious view of God as Absolute Spirit, as the ultimate reality that we can come to know through pure thought processes alone. Hegel said that whatever the nous or absolute thinks at any time is actual substance. He continues to refer to god's plan, which is identical to God. For Hegel, the inner movement of reality is the process of God thinking, as manifested in the evolution of the universe of nature and thought; that is, Hegel argued that, when fully and properly understood, reality is being thought by God as manifested in a person's comprehension of this process in and through philosophy. Since human thought is the image and fulfillment of God's thought, God is not ineffable (so incomprehensible as to be unutterable) but can be understood by an analysis of thought and reality. Just as humans continually correct their concepts of reality through a dialectical process, so God himself becomes more fully manifested through the dialectical process of becoming. The Absolute is a non-personal substitute for the concept of God. It is the one subject that perceives the universe as one object. Individuals share in parts of this perception, since through them the substance becomes subject. Note the pantheistic sounding tone of this concept. It was inspired heavily by classical pantheisms and mysticism, however it is not clear whether hegel conceived this concept of world spirit as literally being the unfolding of the mind of a sentient god, versus an abstract metaphysical force. But there is much room to be inspired by hegelian ideas in multiple directions. Hegel himself presented his work as compatible with christianity, though that claim was met with skepticism due to the nature of some of its aspects, as well as the fact that many philosophers would claim this despite having views that vary from it widely. Hegel was also familiar with gnosticism and kabbalah, and the works of meister eckhart, having himself given lectures on them at times. And so the mystical influence on his work is noted, even if he himself was not passing it off as mystical in character. The idea of god revealing itself in the world, the dialectical process, and aspects tied to emanationism all have parallels within mystical traditions. Hegel talking about how reality is mediated by ideas and perception is something stated in both persona 5 and in iva, with it being more clear in persona 5 where you are told that the real world to you is whatever your perceptions of it are. While classical versions of these ideas tended to take it further down the road to idealism than modern ones, this element still remains, especially in continental philosophy as an important fact of understanding that all your perceptions and understandings are mediated by subjective elements such as culture and language. In iva it even being highlighted as a facet of language, talking about gods being bounded by language within human perception. This equation of societal forces to spirit and god of course has a parallel in the fact that the gods in game are literal embodiments of the social forces of the age, and have power in accord with this. Gods influence humans, and have an organic symbiosis with them similar to how hegel thinks the interrelation between people and the zeitgeist is organic, and depicts this in a mystical and religious light. Hegel himself of course equated this with the religion in a naturalistic way, describing it as a tangible organic relation that influences the emergence of people from certain cultures. Though despite the explicit hegel references in megaten, this aspect in-game may be more of a reference to other things. Since its not always clear what all has influenced any given aspect. The concept of the absolute being personalized through the action and unfolding of the things within reality, with them functioning as its consciousness and subjectivity is described in game in a way that sounds very hegelian. The great will is also called the great reason / axiom, which implies something like a law of reality. (note the comparison between a universal law and hegel saying reality is structured logically) And while it as a distinct thing is not taking actions in the personal sense as a separate being, it is still personified as doing so due to the unfolding of events manifesting as action. The description of how it sees the world through the messiah's eyes sounds heavily like hegel talking about how there is only one substance but it gains subjectivity through the individual subejctivity of human activity. Hegel's organicism here is depicted by him not as mere metaphor, but as a tangible way to approach spirituality, and that the essence of the geist you emerge from, its organic relation to you, and the underlying laws of reality that unfold through you are all literal ways to contextualize spirituality, without violating naturalism per say. Though again, note that hegel like many at his time thought that there was a single metanarriative of reality. To hegel, reality was operating based on specific paths that ultimately would in effect by necessity likely arrive at a specific place. Modern views that call metanarratives of this nature into question tend to be less specific. Megaten of course does not imply that any specific end is necessitated by the unfolding of dialectical logic. Being, becoming, and identity Hegel was heavily inspired by heraclitus, saying that "there is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in my Logic." Part of this was applying the dialectial method to the concept of being, The synthesis or concrete of the development of the idea to hegel reveals that being and nonbeing are in a sense empty terms that neither of which have meaning save in the concept of becoming. This was similar to process philosophers, in their focus on reality as composed of process rather than substance. In terms of personal identity, hegel is considered to be either a priority monist if not substance monist. He believes that ultimately the metaphysically prior reality is the one absolute, and that reality is in a sense top down. He believes that truth is only in unity as well, and as such only the whole is "true." With individuals in relation to it being only parts of this truth rather than independent things in their own right. However, hegel did not deny that individuals existed in some sense. Another important principle for Hegel is the negation of the negation, which he also terms Aufhebung (sublation). Something is only what it is in its relation to another, but by the negation of the negation this something incorporates the other into itself. This is also true with the concept of self identity. While there is ultimately only one substance, the self is derived from its subjective differentiation from the other. Which while he did not use these concepts could tie to ideas like open individualism. In keeping with the concept of the dialectic it focused on both the interrelation as well as the larger spirit. Individual subjective beings provide the subjectivity of the absolute spirit, and as geist its collective knowledge. In Hegel, the term Aufhebung / sublation has the apparently contradictory implications of both preserving and changing, and eventually advancement. The tension between these senses suits what Hegel is trying to talk about. In sublation, a term or concept is both preserved and changed through its dialectical interplay with another term or concept. Sublation is the motor by which the dialectic functions. In comparison with megaten, note that the kind of monist view of identity does show up at times, but with emphasis on it not denying the individual existence. People functioning both as individuals as well as aspects of a larger identity - what hegel calls geist - show up as well. Though these aspects in-game can have any number of sources used for inspiration. Sublation also ties to how neutral especially is depicted as unifying dualities. This being referenced explicitly in persona 5. The end of history Although hegel himself held many political positions, many of which were indicative of the specific concept of the times, the most relevant concepts to address are his overall ideas on the evolution of politics itself, as well as the end goal. Hegel himself considered the evolution of ethics and politics to likewise happen in a dialectical manner. Ethics, on Hegel's view, begins with the concept of freedom understood as the right of each individual human being to act independently in pursuit of its own self-interest. The antithesis to this is the emergence of moral rules, which require the imposition of duty as a constraint upon the natural liberty of human desire. The synthesis of the two for Hegel is "the ethical life," which emerges from a sincere recognition of the significance of one's own stake in the greater good of the whole. This itself evolves dialectically through history until both human understanding of morality, and the government they find themselves in will ultimately reach their hypothetical zenith. Hegel considered the evolution of ideas to be on the whole one of progress and improvement, although there were times there were setbacks. These concepts would continue to evolve until eventually they reach what has been dubbed the end of history. The end of history is a political and philosophical concept that supposes that a particular political, economic, or social system may develop that would constitute the end-point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and the final form of human government. The idea of the end of history does not mean that nothing more would ever happen, but rather that history as it was conceived of in the past in the sense of competing groups and ideologies that result in historical events would stop because humanity as a whole would reach a point of absolute understanding, in the face of which such distinctions and events would no longer arise. This being because they have arrived at the ideal form of government in which no more evolution would be sought or necessary. Hegel's ideal outcome involves a culmination of the idea of freedom. Though his concept of freedom would have been different from certain modern concepts of the idea. In a hegelian state people would be aware of what is needed and expected from them, but would also freely choose it. Every member would love the situation they find themselves in, but not out of a mere patriotism, but a reflective choice to engage. Members of a Hegelian State are happy even to sacrifice their lives for the state, though due to the end of history such events would not even be required. Some have argued that Hegel's vision of the state as an organic rational whole, leaves no room for individual dissent and choice, and by extension no room for the very freedom he was advocating. However, it should be noted that Hegel's idea of freedom was quite different from what we thing of as the classical liberal conception of freedom (which he would have seen as merely the ability to follow your own caprice), and rather consists in the fulfillment of oneself as a rational individual according to one's particular nature. He did not expound in any detail, though, on his vision of the ideal state, and how such a state might avoid sinking into authoritarianism and Totalitarianism. Some have considered his works on politics a large inspiration for the authoritarianism of the 1900s, especially via the medium of marx. While the aspect of dialectics in-game are associated with neutral, the idea of the hegelian end of history is a large basis of inspiration for law, especially via its influence on socialistic ideologies. Law worlds are depicted as setting up a certain structure which would be preserved indefinitely, since certain deviations would no longer be needed. Though in-game, this does not mean no more change would happen, just not deviation from the particular social system's ideals. It is depicted as a situation that for the most part everyone would be happy with, and independently approve of, being free from their own perspective, and freely choosing this despite this not ending in strife and ultimately preserving the system. Note though that the seeming conflict between relative freedom yet total peace is resolved in law via a transformation of the human consciousness. Note also that this description of the end of history as the manifestation of god as something tied to the collection of society is something shown in megaten as well. In the end of strange journey they talk about the holy spirit in a way that implies manifestation due to the unity and relation with their design. And so god in a sense is being described not here as just a being, but as an abstract presence that is the organic unity of society, and manifested through its members. With in the added scenes in II them even saying that people can function as a face of god, who is in and of itself not any particular being. God is often talked about this way in various games, in keeping with the pantheistic elements of the series. And since hegel is one of the most well known writers with pantheistic elements is likely an inspiration. Note of course that this conflict resolution is rejected by neutral and chaos, who see the form of human mentality that preserves a specific system, even if independently chosen by its members as itself not counting as what it considers sufficiently free, since for such an idea to work they would have to effectively be structured such that they consider other options unthinkable. This of course gets into the question of what it means to be free, and whether any choice can be meaningfully considered free due to ebing bounded by certain structured, and human nature itself. Neutral seems to reject a specific end, seeing it as incompatible with the idea of human choice, and the human ability to autonomously choose new systems, perhaps even different by generation. Nietzsche notably disagreed heavily with hegel about this idea of society moving towards this goal in particular, seeing it more as the conflict of various individuals, and the idea of a final goal to look for as idealistic. Notably nietzsche is associated more with neutral and chaos. Note of course that the end of history type event that law seeks is not something that it sees history as inherently teleologically leading to, but rather something that they need to actually establish and bring about by their own hand. And that while they consider it an ideological goal that unfolds from their idea of reality it is not something inherently there as a metanarriative of reality. Though it is something that once arrived at it would be very difficult for it to be deviated from save for in rare occurrences. Being self preserving.